Seraphim Space Investment Trust on what to expect and look out for

Last year saw a record year of private capital invested in space, with a 60% increase to US$12.4nm, amid a year of long-awaited breakthroughs from the industry. 

These included headline-grabbing space tourism for Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (NYSE:SPCE) and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, as well as new rocket achievements from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, along with a number of public listings on both sides of the Atlantic for space-related companies, including Spire Global Inc (NYSE:SPIR), Arqit Quantum Inc (NASDAQ:ARQQ) and AST SpaceMobile Inc (NASDAQ:ASTS).

With ‘space’ becoming more widely accepted as a new investment asset class, one of those public market newcomers in London, Seraphim Space Investment Trust PLC (LSE:SSIT), said it believes 2022 is likely to see continued momentum in investment and public interest in the area of space tech that is its specialist domain.

This is one of seven space predictions for 2022 that the investment trust has set out.

Momentum in space

With public interest remaining high in mega-rocket launches, including the latest launch by SpaceX last week, Seraphim expect this momentum to continue in 2022 “as space is at an inflection point”.

“Significant new capabilities in satellite communications and Earth observation are coming online that could disrupt traditional industries and create new ones. We believe public enthusiasm for Space will remain high with the launch of new mega-rockets in the coming year.”

Big rocket launches to look out for in the year includes NASA’s giant Artemis 1 moon rocket (launching in March or April) and SpaceX’s next-generation Starship, which both plan to take humans back up to the moon, with the intention of one day extending these trips all the way to Mars, not to mention Boeing’s Starliner, and NASA’s Psyche mission and asteroid-targeting DART.

Countries including South Korea, Japan, India and UAE are planning to launch their first missions the Moon.  

Green space

Seraphim perceives growing relevance for space companies tackling climate change and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

The explosion of new geospatial data and development of analytics have become increasingly relevant to solving big problems related to climate change, with companies operating in this area including Planet Labs (NYSE:PL), Spire, ICEYE, Tomorrow.io, GHG Sat, Scepter Air and Pixxel SatelliteVu, Cervest, Sust Global and RS Metrics.

Not only is this wide choice of higher-resolution, frequently updated space data is enabling new applications to monitor and track objects and activities on earth, but earthbound companies are also using space tech in the rush to calibrate their ESG performance the large and growing investor and regulatory pressure.

“Space data provides powerful tools to help institutions establish a baseline to monitor their…